


Screams That Have Been Turned Into Shapes

by SandrC



Series: Not Another Fanfiction Collection [9]
Category: Not Another D&D Podcast
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Scars, Spoilers for episode 62, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 15:24:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18967975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandrC/pseuds/SandrC
Summary: "Words are basically screams that've been turned into shapes."Coward. Coward. Coward.





	Screams That Have Been Turned Into Shapes

**Author's Note:**

> Hey hi hello people. I'm a sad boy. I miss my dummy fighter and would like him back please.
> 
> Also: while I do love Jveliin, who is a great polite boy who deserves many hugs, I really want Hardwon to be back. Like...three hours ago. Real time.
> 
> Anyway, I'm thinking about Hardwon and that raw fucking line Deadeye gave us about reading so...
> 
> This happened.
> 
> These are not lessons. They're internalized abuse. You're worth so much more than this, Hardwon.
> 
> (Also the Jveliin reveal had me going from "no boys allowed" to "son boy allowed" from 0-60. I fucking love him so fucking much. He's a zealot barbarian too, which is a Xanathar's subclass! At later levels, if he's raging, he can keep going after hitting 0HP instead of having to make death saves, though the damage can still stack to negative half (or dead af) so...also rage only lasts for one minute. There's that. Anyway, nerding aside, appreciate this please and be sad with me.)

He wasn't long for this world. That was a fact he knew well.

Hardwon Surefoot, fastest climber under the mountain, cracked his head open when he was nine, taking a tumble from a high perch after showing off. The clerics didn't bother doing more than making sure he didn't die, letting the wound scar over so he'd remember the lesson he learned. _Don't be an ass, kid. Nature ain't as kind as people._

If you pet his hair the right way — like Moonshine did the night Gemma died — you could feel the puckered flesh that altered his part. Otherwise it was a message for him and him alone: _you are lucky to be alive. You won't survive this again._

Hardwon Surefoot, oft dead, fell to a lance in his gut. The man was a prime assassin. They had been warned about it. His fucking weapon was called _the Death Lance_ goddammit! Plain as the lack of ass on Beverly! And as the cold harsh embrace of death wrapped around him —

As he saw his choices laid bare —

As he saw his mother wandering the plains of Shadowfell —

He knew that it wasn't anyone's fault but his own that he'd gotten here.

But Beverly and Moonshine screamed his name, Balnor begged him to stay alive, Bev Sr screamed in fury, and he headed back to them. Not because he felt he was _worth_ it, but because he felt his death would hurt them more than it would absolve him of his own sins.

That night he ran his fingers over the pale, cold scar the Death Lance left in his side — stigmata, the irony, but nonetheless — and wept. Not for dying, but for not staying dead. Because this scar was another message: _you are more trouble than you're worth._ And he listens and he learns.

Hardwon Surefoot, thick of quad and calf, felt the cold ivory of teeth in his neck and nothing more. Blood, iron and copper and _red red red_ , pooled everywhere and he was —

He _was_ —

Inside his head, in the far back, was a single thought. _Scarlett Montgomery is your everything. You are only around because she deemed you useful._

 _Sure_ , he thought, barely conscious, _that makes sense._

And when he woke, groggy and weak, surrounded by his friends and Deadeye and also the burning pain of Beverly's hands against his skin — _yo_ , what the actual Dwarven fuck?! — he could feel the most recent message life left for him against his collar bone. Twin indentations that told him: _your life is not your own and this is **all your fault.**_

Hardwon Surefoot, tired and scared, sat outside the Church of _Our Lady of Penance_ , a worn children's book in his hands and Deadeye beside him. He doesn't mention the red in the back of his head that begs him to kill, feed, bring back traitors to Scarlett, _do it do it do it_. Instead he stared off at the door, eyes catching the flicker of movement within. A dusty-skinned figure and —

Deadeye said that words were just screams that were turned into shapes. So were people, really...

Hardwon, fangs bared, was trapped in himself. He lashed out, trapped in his mind in the form of a large marsupial.

He screamed inside his own head a single word, written in blood:

_**Coward.** _


End file.
